Читать книгу As Meat Loves Salt - Maria McCann, Maria McCann - Страница 15

Ikept with him from then on, except when we were forcibly separated, as for drill. By dint of frequent repetition I was now grown proficient in this, and not only joined with the rest of the men in proper form as regards rank and file, but also went through the pikeman’s postures without pause or bungle. In addition I had learnt to follow the drum, and to know the beats for Call, Troop, March, Preparative, Battle and Retreat, all of which lessons I endeavoured to put into practice as best I might, for I was the same proud and careful workman I had always been.

Ferris’s task, as he had said, was to help with the artillery, and there were many times when we could not be together. Besides, he had his own mates among the gunners. In fact, he had plenty of friends among all the better sort of men – after two days he had my coat ready, for one of these friends was a tailor – and he would often joke with them. But he hated certain kinds of bawdry, in particular tales of amours struck up with women obliged to give free quarter, when the men jeeringly recounted their conquests afterwards. At times, too, soldiers would chronicle some rape reported of the Cavaliers, speaking with a relish which showed them secretly envious, and this he perceived and despised.

Some of the men jestingly called him Mistress Lilly to his face, and must certainly have had a name for me too, but took care not to let me hear it. I was not so much under Ferris’s sway that I was grown soft. One quick step up to a man, my eyes staring into his, settled most arguments.

‘You frighten me, Rupert,’ said Ferris one day after watching me see off a man who had tried to steal my snapsack.

‘Have I ever picked a fight?’

‘Not of late. But when I see you like that, I ask myself, will he know when to stop?’

This again put me in mind of Izzy. ‘While you are there, I will always know when,’ I said.

‘You haven’t in the past?’

He waited. I turned away.

‘You should try to be friends with the men.’

I knew what he meant. Those walking near us did not care for me. More than once, coming back from the latrines or from drill I heard the tail end of some speech, perhaps my name, and then men’s eyes would shutter over as I approached and the group would break up. As for their prattle, I cared nothing for it. But on occasion they would come and talk to Ferris, and he, being kind, seemed to relish it, and then I felt them squeezing me out. I had reproached him therewith, and he said that a man needs friends on the battlefield, that one of these had pulled him out from under a corpse at Bristol and that they were his companions still.

From time to time Nathan would join us, but some coolness was grown up between Ferris and him. The boy would hang about, seeming not to know what he should do, and though he spoke to me always with courtesy, I more than once found his glittering eyes fixed on mine as if I had done him some hurt. I could not recall any insult offered to him, and since his talk was wearisome, I was glad when he wandered away.

Not long after the time when Ferris said I should make me some friends, we were marching together and he asked me had I family living. That was a question I dreaded. He had once started on this tack before, but one of those fools broke in on us – the only time I was glad. Afterwards, I had chewed over my story, and now it was needed I had it at my tongue’s end.

‘I know not if my brothers are dead or alive,’ I said. ‘One of them I last saw at our Master’s place in the country. He was wrongly suspected for…something, and I had to go without knowing what became of him.’

Ferris raised his eyebrows at me and I felt I might as well have confessed. ‘And the other?’

‘Wounded, the last time I saw him. Not by me. He had a fever. I lost him in a wood and when I came out of it you found me on the road.’

His eyes rested on me, grave, considering. ‘You left home in a great hurry, it seems.’

‘Aye.’

We walked on a few yards. I knew he was waiting for more, but when he spoke it was to ask, ‘Are they like you, these brothers?’

‘In their persons? Not nearly so tall. But we are all dark-skinned. Zebedee – he’s the youngest – is the properest man you ever saw, gentry not excepted. Everyone that sees him, well, women…’ I paused.

‘A black man is a jewel in a lady’s eye, eh? And the other?’

‘Isaiah is the eldest, the one before me. He is weak of body and looks older than his years. But he does as much work as most.’

Ferris nodded. ‘What I meant was, are they troubled in soul like you?’

‘I would say, they have no cause.’ It was the nearest I could get to a confession.

‘If only you could find out what became of them,’ he mused.

We walked on in silence. I felt his goodwill towards me. Perhaps one day I would be able to tell him everything, even that I was that detested being, a ravisher. I knew Ferris would not admit that her being my wife changed the case. He had already expressed himself more than once on this subject, and said no man might force a woman, no not his wife, for that it took away her bodily dignity. Whenever he talked of it he clenched his fists and jaw, and I at first concluded he must have witnessed many instances among the soldiery; yet when I asked him he said it was a thing, thank God, that he had never seen for himself.

‘We may pass near your Master’s house,’ he suddenly cried. ‘Who knows, they may demand free quarter there.’

I had told Ferris where Beaurepair lay, and he had frighted me most cruelly by letting me know that the army was headed back in that direction.

‘I can never go back.’

‘You have a new name, Prince Rupert, a new round head and a beard coming.’

‘I can’t disguise my height.’

‘You’re not the only tall man in England. I’ll shave your head for you the night before.’

‘Christ preserve me.’ I felt my guts coiling at the idea of entering the grounds.

Ferris said soothingly, ‘Most likely they’ll quarter us elsewhere.’ I thought of Mister Biggin’s household, which was worse still. He went on, ‘That means sending Fat Tommy over at night to find out.’ Fat Tommy was a living skeleton who could walk as fast as some people could run. ‘He can go as a beggar; you’ll give him a day’s bread and beer.’

‘This is building castles in Spain.’

‘What else should a man do on march? Come, to whom shall we send him?’

‘Zeb’s great friend was Peter. A manservant.’

‘And your sir-name?’

‘Cullen. My brothers, Isaiah and Zebedee.’ It was a knell on my tongue. ‘And—’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’ I could not unpack the stinking wound that was Caro, not yet. ‘I need to know what the master did to Izzy, and whether they caught them—’

‘Them? You said Isaiah was left at home?’

‘Him, I mean. Zeb. Will Tommy remember all this?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ferris. He fixed me with his eyes. ‘Tommy’s story will be as good as your own.’

There was a little coolness in him after this speech, but we got over it as we got over many awkward moments. He did not like my trying to deceive him, but he could also see that I was in travail with myself. As we drew near my own country I grew almost possessed: I had difficulty breathing, my head ached, and the ration, poor and plain as it was, would not lie quiet in my belly. At last, as the sun was sinking, I recognised a mound known to the folk around Beaurepair as Mulberry Hill. It was on Walshe’s land. We had been approaching for some time before I knew the place, for I had only once before seen it from that side. The recognition hit as hard as seeing the gallows, with the noose knotted up for me and dangling ready.

‘What ails you, Rupe?’ someone called.

I was reeling as if drunk.

‘Devil’s in him,’ came a voice from behind.

‘Got the staggers,’ Ferris said over his shoulder. After a few minutes he whispered to me, ‘Well?’

‘That hill. One lives there who hates me, who’d burn me alive.’

‘Burn you alive? Burn?’ He stared at me.

‘Burn, hang – anything cruel.’

‘Ah,’ Ferris murmured. ‘Courage, he won’t get the chance. Who is this mighty hater?’

‘A man – there’s a woman too.’

‘Do they have names?’

I was silent. We trudged onwards, and I managed to straighten up.

‘I’ll shave your head tonight,’ he said after a while.

‘Thank you.’ I wanted badly that he should understand me, at least a little, and went on, ‘Do you remember saying that some men warm themselves at others’ sins?’

‘No.’

‘Well—’ I had made an ill start, but as usual could not leave it alone. ‘It was you told me about them. And I find there are others, who may be soiled and hurt by another’s sins. I cannot always speak freely of myself to you. I would not infect you.’

‘O, you fear my emulation? You think you’re the first sinner I have met with?’ He laughed. ‘I do recall now our talk of men and sins. You were asking me about Naseby-Fight! Do you not think that might have infected me?’

‘Yes of course, you have seen – things – but my own acts give me bad dreams. I would not give such dreams to you.’

‘I’ve plenty of my own.’

‘You said you were afraid of me sometimes.’

‘Mostly when you talk like this. Confess, have you burnt a village in their beds?’

I rolled my eyes at him.

‘Well, that’s the way you get me thinking. You suffer from pride, Rupert. I wager you think God can’t forgive you.’

‘I did think so. But not now he has sent me such a friend.’

This pacified him somewhat. It was getting dark, and soon we struck camp. He was as good as his word, heating a bowl of water over the fire and shaving my head with surprising deftness, his hand firm on the back of my neck. I watched his face and saw there absolute concentration,the absorption of a craftsman, as he passed the razor over my skin. The blade being coarse, he could not help nicking me in places, and each time he did so he frowned.

‘You would make a good barber,’ I said when he was done, fingering my shorn scalp.

The firelight showed me that he was smiling, whether at my gratitude or at my strange new looks I could not tell.

‘This puts me in mind of old times,’ I went on. ‘The servants out on a fine evening and the work mostly done. Sitting with my brothers. We were reading pamphlets,’ and despite everything I warmed at the memory. ‘About God’s commonwealth in England. Zeb and Peter had tobacco and we took it in turns to read aloud. We would go down behind the stables and hide from the steward, and the maidservants would come too, if they could. I affected one of them, Caroline.’ I hoped that in the darkness he would not see how her name made me wince.

‘What were your pamphlets?’ Ferris asked eagerly. ‘Not stuff your master would like?’

‘Not a whit! We had All Men Brothers and Of Kingly Power and Its Putting Down and some others, bits and pieces. I was rapt with them.’

‘Could you all read?’

‘My father fee’d a tutor for us three.’

My friend looked his surprise at me.

‘We were not always servants,’ I said. ‘Another time I’ll tell you how that was. Our Izzy taught Caro her letters when she was a child.’

It came back to me with sweetness and pain, my brother bending over her, pointing out a line in the hornbook. He had been her champion and favourite all through childhood; his reward had been self-denial and sacrifice, which I had at last trampled under my feet. He would never call his precious one ‘sister’, kiss her innocently at Christmas or see her happy with his brother’s babe in her arms. Somewhere, if not dead – no, that was not possible, God would not be so cruel – they must each be wondering what was become of me.

Ferris was speaking.

‘I am sorry?’ I said.

‘In London. I wrote just such pamphlets, printed them too.’

‘What, those same ones!’ I wrenched my thoughts away from Izzy and Caro.

‘No. But very like. I kept company with men of ideas, not useless projects but all that might bring Adam out of bondage. Our chief design was that the commons, that fought the war and bore the free quarter, might not be ridden over by little kings at home, for then where was the use of having fought at all?’

I thought of Sir Bastard and nodded.

‘Now is the time,’ he went on, ‘when we might do just such a thing. These poor people that starve at the door of Dives, that cannot take a turf of the common ground and dig on it while all the game and suchlike is shut up in Milord’s park – now is their day. The country is up in arms, and the work will be brought about!’ He clapped me on the shoulder, laughing, and I remarked that thus animated, the fire shining full in his face, he was comely. I smiled back and we regarded one another an instant.

‘Are you married, Rupert?’ he asked.

‘I am,’ I answered, surprised into truth.

‘I had a wife, Joanna. She helped me with the pamphlets.’

‘You’re a widower?’

‘God rest her soul. She couldn’t write, but she helped bind the pages. I was teaching her to read, from the Bible. I sometimes wish she were here, but what a place for a woman.’

‘Perhaps she is with you in spirit.’

‘Sometimes – as just now – I feel suddenly persuaded all will be well. That may be Joanna acting upon me. We were merry together; we liked each other well.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Not long. She was but sixteen when she died. She would have been brought to bed about now.’ His voice thickened. ‘One day she was sick and fell to bleeding, the next the child was born dead. She never got out of bed after that, grew weaker every day. The curse upon Eve, the doctor said, agony of childbed. They see so many dead that way.’

I wondered whether Caro had fled the wood with my child within her. ‘Still,’ I said, ‘a man must have issue.’

‘The child was not mine.’

I put my fingers into my mouth for shock and wondered if I had understood aright. He was breathing fast. I looked about to be sure no one else could hear him. The rest of the men were roaring at some jest.

‘It was not mine,’ he repeated. ‘I knew of it, she was in her fourth month when we were contracted.’

‘She had been widowed?’

‘Forced.’

I could scarce believe what I heard. ‘Why didn’t they marry her to the man that did it?’

‘He was already married.’

‘Why didn’t her father act against him?’

Ferris laughed savagely. ‘Why indeed? My manservant – he was courting their maid – dropped a few hints in my ears. The mother was long past beauty and troubled by a sickness of the womb. The father was a man of strong lusts – once word got out, ‘twas no matter for her dowry. None would bite.’

‘None but you?’ Was it possible that he had been so pressed for money as that?

Ferris answered, ‘I should have said, no worthy man would bite: there was one who offered, one who despised her. In the end I took her without the dowry.’

‘Why, when the other would certainly have had it?’

‘Her father disliked my butting in, and would else have concluded the thing. So I made love to his purse; it was either that, or deliver up Joanna to the other man.’

‘Was there liking between her and you?’

‘O yes.’ His voice was grown soft. ‘I had already thought of asking for her, before all this came about.’

‘But you could not be expected to give a name—’

Ferris ignored me. ‘They had her locked up. Every day I saw her staring at me from the window opposite. Once she looked at me with such misery that I opened the casement to talk to her, but she ran into the back of the room.’

‘Afraid of you.’

He nodded. ‘That cut my heart. I began to consider, whether husband rightly meant owner, or protector and friend. I had a thousand uses for the dowry, and refusing it meant the old man profited by his wickedness. But it was the only way.’

‘You must have brought contempt on yourself as a wittol,’ I whispered.

‘A wittol’s wife is his property, only a property he rents out,’ he hissed back. ‘This eternal curse of property! We own our brethren – our wives too are chattels—’

‘You would practise community of wives?’ I asked, shocked to think Ferris might be the author of that very pamphlet over which I had quarrelled with Walshe.

‘You miss my meaning entirely! This selling the girl off was – was a second rape, and no remedy for the first. Why are good people so slow to see this? Many of my friends, calling themselves Christians, urged me to stand aside and do nothing.’ He was agitated. I patted his arm and he went on, ‘It would have come right. On our wedding night she put her arms round my neck and wept. I wept also, and told her that I would never reproach her with the child. I loved her, and what the godless and the heartless said was nothing to me.’

He had turned his face aside; I heard him snuffling and struggling for breath.

‘And then,’ he forced out, ‘she died, and her father was safe. He never came to see her on her deathbed, or me afterwards. I buried her and the baby – it was a girl – sold up, left the money with my aunt, and joined the army.’

On his cheek were tears, which I wanted to dry but dared not touch. I held his hand, feeble and hopeless. I was quite unable to speak. How might a man like me comfort one like him? He had said simply that he showed mercy where he could, but excepting mere brute strength, he was beyond me in every way.

We sat together in silence as the fire burnt down and I thanked God inwardly for showing me what a Christian might be who, like the apostle Paul, considered Charity as the chiefest virtue. I vowed that if I ever had the chance I would atone to my wife and brothers, and I thought how both Izzy and Ferris, neither of them fighting men, had yet endured much to protect those they loved – but that way lay great pain for me, and I got off it. We turned in for the night and after a while I heard Ferris’s breathing light and rapid. He was perhaps with his Joanna, for he laughed once or twice in his sleep and it was such a joyous laugh as I had never heard from Ferris the soldier. Sleepless, I watched the fire. When the ardour of my prayer had cooled, I found in my breast a sneaking wish that I had stopped his talk. After such an outpouring I could never, never tell him what had passed between myself and my wife, and sooner or later he would ask.

The next day things went on as usual for the other men. Nathan prattled of politics while I suffered an agony of terror as we drew nearer and nearer to our house.

‘Courage,’ said Ferris. ‘None would recognise you.’

‘I have others to fear for. What if the news be bad?’

At last the hills parted, as in some evil vision, to discover Beaurepair. A cold hand griped my innards as I looked down upon the buildings. They were most of them well back from the road in low sheltered land, and we were able to survey them first from the side and then from the front as we skirted the walls of the park. We crossed in front of the lodge. Behind the house I could see the gate (now closed) where I had ridden out behind Zeb and Caro, with the field and wood beyond. I wondered if the gate-keeper had lost his place. There was my old chamber window, and a man, perhaps Godfrey, slowly crossing the herb garden.

Ferris looked on the house, and on me, and on the house again. ‘Did they use you well?’

‘Some of them,’ I answered. ‘The Mistress had her good side. But Sir John was a sot, and the son…’ I could not find words strong enough for the son.

‘I was never in a house like that,’ he went on, staring at it. ‘So big.’

‘Don’t the citizens have big houses in London?’

‘Here, Fat Tommy’s behind us.’

We fell out and loitered. I rubbed my sore feet to colour our idleness and Ferris kept watch for the thin soldier. It was not long before he came up, bouncing a little on his skeleton’s legs.

‘Tommy, how would you like more rations?’ said Ferris. ‘Prince Rupert here wants tidings of his friends at that house.’

I showed him the different windows and doors while Ferris kept off Nathan and the rest of the men straggled past. Tommy was quick to learn. Then we got back into the lines and together went through the story, that he was a beggar. I warned him to keep mum before Godfrey. He was to try for a talk with Isaiah Cullen, or Peter Taylor, and find out what was become of the runaway servants.

‘On no account say a man in the army sent you, unless you can talk with Isaiah alone,’ I urged. ‘Alone with him, you may give my likeness.’

‘Once we strike camp,’ he said, nodding. ‘If I can get off.’

We agreed on a day’s ration, beer included, to be paid when he brought back the intelligence. Ferris and I would try to distract attention from his departure.

‘Your luck is in,’ said Ferris to me as I pushed forward to my former place.

‘What do you mean?’ I panted.

‘We won’t stop here, or in the next village either. There’s too much daylight left and they want to get to Winchester, then to Basing-House. Cromwell’s afraid the weather will break and mire his artillery in the mud.’

‘You didn’t tell me this before.’

‘Nathan told me while you were with Tommy.’

‘Oh.’ Nathan again, chattering to Ferris about the New Jerusalem.

‘Why do you frown, Rupert?’

‘You know, I should go back, and make restitution.’

‘I said, why do you frown?’

Restitution. It had a glorious sound. I could offer myself for punishment; it was most likely only a choice of deaths, for my head might be shot off in the field. Though powerless in the matter of Caro and Zeb, I could clear Isaiah’s name. But even as I warmed myself at this vision, something gnawed at me. I pictured myself back at the house and my resolution wavered: I could be brave enough now to deliver myself up, but once there, I knew my heart would fail me. At last I saw that it came to this, that Ferris would march on with Nathan, Russ and his other friends while I faced justice alone. At this thought my courage shrivelled like a withered gourd.

We put up for the night in one of those scoured villages. The men were ill content after passing more comfortable billets, and there was much grumbling as they pulled down bales of straw and spread themselves to rest. Tommy was bedded in the barn with us, which was surely the hand of God in my affairs. I asked the officer, who came round to see how we did, if this Basing-House was what they said, the lid on top of a secret hoard of treasure stolen by Papist priests.

‘It’s a nest of Papists entirely,’ he said. ‘John Paulet, that’s the Marquess, is a declared recusant and he has sworn to hold Basing-House for the King. To death, if need be.’

‘And the treasure? Is it really so much?’

‘Who can say? They have golden idols in their churches. We’ll find out, my lads.’

The men returned his grim smile.

‘Why are we to besiege a house?’ asked Ferris. ‘When there are whole towns held by the Cavaliers?’

I saw Tommy step out through the door and close it behind him.

‘It gives courage to the enemy. And, what some might consider worse, it blocks the wool trade, and there are solid citizens in London bothered thereby.’ The officer’s voice was steady. I looked at his creased face, the scars on his right temple, and wondered had he been at Naseby.

‘Their godless riches can be put into godly hands,’ he added in the same flat voice. This was a heart I could not read; I wondered if Ferris could.

We lay down in broken straw. In the night there was a storm overhead. I listened to the usual snoring, then the cough and stir of every man around me under the hammer of the rain and sudden boom of thunder. Some groaned, perhaps for the wet roads and the labour of the coming day. Waiting for Tommy, wondering if he would get back in time, I had not slept at all. When the storm went off I dozed a while, and was woken by water running down my neck. I shifted, and a hand touched mine. My messenger was wintry cold and the rain dropped from his hair onto my shaven head so that I jumped.

He whispered angrily, ‘That’s nothing man, it’s right through to my skin.’

‘I’m sorry for it, Tom. What news?’

He lay down beside me. ‘Rub my hands, for the love of God. They’re ice.’ I did so, and blew on them. Such cold and bony flesh, it was hateful. He could hardly keep his teeth from knocking together. That was like Zeb, feverish.

‘Thin folks feel the cold the most,’ he said.

‘Keep your mind on the ration,’ I suggested, chafing warmth into his fingers. ‘There, put them under your arms.’ The carcass hands slithered out of mine. ‘So, what news?’

‘What do you most want to know?’

I was unsure where to start. ‘Well. Who did you speak to?’

‘I couldn’t come at any Isaiah or any Peter. There’s no such men there.’

My heart sickened. ‘What, then?’

‘A maidservant.’ I almost cried out, but he went on, ‘French, pretty as you’d see anywhere.’

Madeleine. If My Lady had kept her on, Caro could not be returned. Or she might be in gaol. I waited in terror to hear Caro or Patience spoken of, unsure which prospect frightened me more.

‘But you asked after Isaiah?’ I urged.

‘To be sure. She said that she remembered him, and that he was run away; there was a great hurly-burly with the servants, just about the time you joined the army.’ He laughed hoarsely, throat full of phlegm. ‘There’s two men run off with a maid. That was the second maid they lost, she said, and a lad found dead in the pond. Fine house, by the sound of it.’

‘They’ve caught neither maid nor men?’

‘Still looking for them. Not in the right place, eh, Jacob?’

‘And the third brother? Isaiah?’

He hawked and spat.

‘Isaiah? He’s not dead, Tommy?’

‘Not that she knew. They took him before the magistrate. He had a whipping and was turned out of the house; they said he was more fool than knave.’

Whipped. O Izzy, forgive me. ‘If he was no knave, why turn him out?’ I asked. ‘He was a party to their going?’

‘Some said this, some that. They found a great many papers and pamphlets wrapped up secret and buried behind the stables, where this young maid who gave evidence, I forget her name, said the brothers used to go and talk. But again, he had stayed, and that argued innocence. The other servants gave him an excellent character.’

And the Roches turned him out, I thought. I could remember the name of this young maid – young whore, young spy – if he could not. We had buried nothing behind the stables, all had been burnt. I knew now what they were doing that night when I killed the boy, and most likely other nights too. Poor babes as we were, burning our reading and thinking ourselves safe, when these devils had already laid a mine there could tear us in pieces. My breath came in gasps. Suppose I ever came up against Cornish again, my first thought would be to run, be he never so fat and grey.

‘They do say one brother drowned the young lad,’ Tommy added.

In the darkness it was impossible to read his face.

‘They had an old mother,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose you have news of her?’

‘You never asked for any.’

‘And have they heard anything of this Isaiah since he was turned off?’

‘Not that she told me.’

‘No. Thanks, Tom. I’ll see you all right tomorrow.’

‘O, I nearly forgot. The heir is dead, poisoned.’

I thought I would faint from the shock. ‘Poisoned! By whom?’

‘The brothers, who else?’

Most likely Mervyn had brought the thing on himself. Or had Mounseer had the last laugh after all, and at our expense?

‘God rot all poisoners, I ate some soup there,’ Tommy said. ‘As for you, you’ll have to be cleverer.’

‘How, cleverer?’ I thought he wanted more of the ration from me.

‘I called you Jacob a while back. You never noticed.’

No more I had. As I tried to think how to recover my mistake Tommy moved away into the darkness. I heard him snort to himself, ‘Prince Rupert, forsooth!’

Anguish kept me awake afterwards. I was not sure that I had paid out my bread and beef for any good end. I could not make restitution now, be I never so willing. Izzy might be a soldier, a pressed man fighting for the other side. I shuddered. But no, I could not see either him – or Zeb – being well enough. Izzy was not strong enough to bear a whipping – he would be sick a long time after. Thanks to me, my wife and brothers were all of them destitute. I told myself that Zeb and Caro had the jewels. Did Izzy understand what Cornish had done to him? Did he try to prove that those devils buried the papers themselves?

I turned over and my thoughts flowed into a different channel. Now I marvelled at the coldness of Patience, who had lain in Zeb’s arms and plotted his destruction. Carnality is of the flesh, but this was a pure deep drink of the Devil. As for Cornish, he knew who it was had killed his boy, and had doubtless laid plans for me.

There are foes against whom it is no help to be tall and strong. I was afraid of a young woman and a man past his prime, because they outwent me in imagination. Now I was possessed of a friend who might help, yet I was afraid to lose him, as I had lost Caro, in the act of unburdening myself. Tommy had said I was not clever. I had spun myself a wretched web; but I would at least try to learn from my errors. Yet it was hard to see how that might be done, and I lay sleepless long after.

Ferris was awake before me and shook me until I opened my eyes. ‘Rupert. Tommy’s back.’

‘We’ve already talked.’ I rubbed my face. ‘I’m not much wiser than I was.’

‘But he did get there?’

‘He went all right. But all he could find was, they have whipped Isaiah and turned him off. No one else has been heard of.’

He patted my shoulder. ‘You can do nothing, then. That’s hard.’ He was righter than he knew, for I was in no position to return the jewels.

Grey air blew in through the barn windows. My friend sat beside me in the straw; he looked weary and when I studied his profile he seemed not much fatter than Tommy. I dreaded the day’s marching after my broken sleep. I could hear men outside moving carts and cooking pots, and I remembered that my rations were forfeit. Ferris opened his sack and held out a piece of bread.

I shook my head. ‘No, keep it.’

‘I can’t eat if you have nothing. Come on.’

We descended to the farmyard outside the barn. Someone had found eggs and laid them in the ashes to cook; the farmer would be angry, not only for the eggs but for the hen, which was doubtless under some soldier’s coat. Our morning food and drink was handed out, and mine went straight to Tommy. I had thought of refusing him payment, but could not in front of Ferris. My friend took some water from the cauldron in a pot he had and supped half his bread in it, then offered the mess to me. Musty as it was, the smell of it broke my self-control and I ate, urgent as a starved dog.

‘It’s warm at least,’ I said. I hoped Ferris would not be too hungry without it. Not far off the thief was handing hot eggs out to his friends, laughing to see the men juggle them from palm to palm. I saw Philip come up and beg for one. He waved to me and I nodded back. The thief refused him a share, and I was glad. Then the prentice pointed me out to another man. There followed a series of curious gestures, followed by laughter.

‘Was that the lad cut my hair?’ I asked Ferris.

‘What makes you think so?’

I watched Philip pat his skull, grimacing in mock amazement. ‘It was.’

Ferris shrugged. ‘What does it matter? It’s been shaved since.’

‘You talked once of bodily dignity.’

‘I’ve seen heads shot off.’

He seemed out of sorts. We had no drill that day, and as soon as the men had eaten and packed up their belongings we were ready to go again. Mud covered the road and we sank in up to our knees where those in front had churned it. The troops plodded on like cattle, heads bowed.

‘Do you still fear action?’ I asked as the soldiers just ahead moved off.

He nodded. ‘So will you, when you’re in it.’

‘When did you last engage, then?’

‘Bristol. We were there from late August to the tenth of September. We began the real assault at two in the morning, and it was eight before the Prince appealed for terms. We were two hours at push of pike. Two hours.’ He whistled.

‘A long time?’

‘You’re a pikeman. Work it out.’

‘Last engaged at Bristol? I thought you were at Devizes?’

‘Aye, Devizes! That was nothing. They surrendered straight off. But Bristol – first I got a blow on the head knocked me out, then a fellow who took a musket ball in the guts fell with his belly right on my face, bleeding into my nose and mouth. Russ pulled him off, else—’ Ferris grimaced. ‘I can still taste him.’

I shuddered as we squelched onwards.

‘It was just after Devizes we found you, Prince Rupert. Some of the men reckoned you were Plunderland himself, others thought how a black man was lucky, and said you’d brought us luck already.’ He grinned at the memory.

‘You didn’t believe it?’

‘No, of course not! God decides these things, not a man’s skin.’

‘Amen to that.’ Yet I wanted to be lucky to him. ‘Why you? Why were you the one to save me?’

‘O, it wasn’t just me. The prentices helped.’

‘You mean they cut my hair. You were the one gave me food and drink.’

‘Well, you weren’t very thankful just at first! They held you down while I poured it in.’ He laughed, and turned to me. ‘What does it matter? Rupert?’

‘It matters not at all.’ I felt strangely cold. Perhaps I was sickening for something.

‘Are you well, friend? Nothing wrong?’

‘Only hunger,’ I said and vomited up the bread he had given me.

By the time we got to Winchester I was sweating, dizzy, barely able to walk. Ferris dragged me onwards, saying that once we arrived I could lie down.

The troops had been ordered to conduct themselves in a Christian manner, to carry nothing away nor cause any nuisance or harm to the citizens, provided we were entertained without resistance and not obliged to assault the place. We waited, armed and ready, at the city gate while Cromwell summonsed the Mayor, one Longland, and demanded access into the city ‘to save it and the inhabitants from ruin’.

Word went round that Longland had half an hour in which to reply. Men picked lice from their bodies, rubbed their hands and stamped against the cold, while I fixed my mind on standing upright so as not to be trampled should we go in by force.

After a short time Longland returned to the gate, bringing the civil reply that the place was not his to yield up, but was in the gift of the Governor, Sir William Ogle, and that he himself would undertake to bring Ogle to it.

At this Cromwell would tarry no longer, and we burst in regardless of what Ogle might do or say. Their men barely resisted, so that the whole army was got in without hurt.

‘Sit here,’ said Ferris, leading me to a low wall. ‘If challenged, you are too sick to move. I will find out where you should go.’ He pushed through the mass of soldiers towards the nearest officers. I sat head in hands, wondering if I should die there without having seen action.

‘Rupert.’ Ferris was back and plucking at my arm. ‘They are laying the sick and wounded in a church near here. We must get you in.’

I rose, dazed, and allowed him to lead me where he would. Men were swarming like ants through the streets.

‘Ogle has shut himself up in the castle,’ Ferris went on. ‘So it’s to be siege, after all. I won’t be able to watch out for you.’

He was short of breath. I clung to him, afraid that once fallen, I would never rise again.

‘Don’t lean on me, you’ll have me down,’ he gasped. We staggered along; once I slipped on the cobbles and Ferris swore at me. At last I heaved myself up some steps and through the pointed archway of God’s house. I heard Ferris cry, ‘Help here, I beg of you,’ before I sank onto the flags of the church.

During the siege I lay on a hurdle, taking nothing but sips of beer and the odd spoonful of pease which someone gave me. At times methought I was talking to Zeb. At others I was with Caro, and newly espoused. I must have said something blushworthy, for the man who was in charge of tending the wounded grinned at me whenever he saw me after. Ferris told me later that the second day of the bombardment was a Sunday, which had boggled them somewhat at first, until Hugh Peter, chaplain to the train of General Fairfax, led them in prayer and preaching even as the artillery was set off. In the midst of this I lay drifting in and out of fever, perhaps coaxing the attendant with the honeyed words of courtship.

When I came to my right reason I first saw the roof far above me,its carvings and gilt. There was a stench of blood and other foulness in my nostrils, and on turning my head I saw a line of sick and wounded laid along the nave. Their screams and prayers echoed from the walls of the church, then slackened to an exhausted muttering. Camp followers, wives and women who passed for wives, wept over the flayed and shattered bodies they were come to nurse; men crazed with pain called on long-dead mothers who could once kiss a hurt away. Near me one panted as if from a hard fight, while on my other side a man wailed something I could not interpret, the words twisting into a howl as the pain opened up in him. From time to time a young lad, burnt and slashed into fever, gabbled hoarsely to ‘Jim’.

A cracked bell chimed as the ground shook under us. That was the guns going off, and I thought at once of Ferris. Raising myself a little, I saw one of the attendants bent over a man nearby. At first with my dry mouth I could not raise my voice above a whisper, so I slapped on the ground with my hand. He came over at once, and I was just able to make myself heard.

‘Friend, what day is this?’ I croaked.

‘A great one, for you,’ he replied. ‘I never thought to hear you speak again.’

‘But how long is it since I came in?’

‘Three days, four.’ He went off and came back with a cup of some herb. As I wetted my burning throat, he added, ‘Your mate’ll be glad to see you come through.’